Rod-shaped bodies, such as sections of wires, pipes, tubes, or the like, which are supplied in the form of roughly oriented, but otherwise disordered, entangled bundles, often need to be separated from the supplied bundles prior to further processing and to be deposited in an orderly arrangement and buffered, before they are then subjected to further processing, such as mounting, finishing, bending, or the like.
German patent DE 4137518 C2 discloses an arrangement for separating rod-shaped bodies, wherein the bundle of bodies is placed in a cavity formed by a continuous conveyor belt, in which cavity the bundle is disentangled by the movement of the belt, the bodies are separated from each other via depressions in the belt and conveyed out of the cavity towards a discharging station. However, this has the disadvantage that only a bundle of bodies of a very limited size can be received in the cavity, and after separation of the bodies has been effected, the cavity has to be filled again.
In the separating arrangement for long, thin pipes disclosed in DE 4336753 C2, a bundle of pipes is placed on a segmented table comprising depressions for receiving individual pipes. By manual shifting of the pipes on the table, the pipes are moved into the depressions and, thus arranged, can be conveyed into a magazine and received there as a supply for a processing machine. However, the manual introduction of the pipes into the receiving grooves of the receiving table has turned out to be very disadvantageous.
DE 100 16 036 C2 discloses a step conveyor for rod-shaped bodies, comprising step elements which are supported relative to each other in a cyclically displaceable or rotatable manner for transport of the workpieces and which cooperate to convey the workpieces in a step-like manner. However, the use of this technology requires that the elongated bodies to be conveyed have no flexible portions and are not pre-mounted either, because this known arrangement will be unsuitable in these cases.
The same disadvantage also applies with respect to the prior art known from European patent publication EP 1 230 047 B1, wherein wires are separated from a disordered bundle via a plurality of sequentially arranged combing out wheels.
EP 0 790 086 B1 describes a method and an apparatus for separation and further processing of metal rods from a bundle, wherein one end of the bundle is lifted so that several rods are engaged by a magnetic holding means. Their positions can be determined by a suitable measuring device, and a favorably located metal rod can be seized by a gripper which then pulls the rod out of the bundle in a longitudinal direction and deposits it on a depositing table. However, in this case the bundle has to be laterally guided when lifting it so as to avoid dropping the metal rods. Moreover, no buffering region is provided between a subsequently arranged processing machine and the separating apparatus.
EP 1 415 939 B1 and DE 699 22 469 T2 disclose a separating arrangement wherein an end part of a bundle of rods is seized and lifted by shear-like grippers, the closing movement of said grippers having the result that ultimately only one rod remains seized between them. This separated rod is deposited via an inclined plane extending below it and is separated over its entire length. However, this has the disadvantage that fixing in the gripper may not be sufficient in case of stronger axial forces, and moreover the picked up rods must not comprise any nuts or the like in the gripping region.